Air Canada passengers trapped for hours as plane forced to turn back on Brazil trip

Two Canadian personalities trapped with passengers

A flight from Toronto to Brazil was forced to turn around Thursday after authorities suspected a passenger on board had somehow managed to avoid security screening at Pearson Airport, Air Canada confirmed.

Olivier Cullen, was one of 189 passengers on the Sao Paulo-bound flight — many of whom had tickets to an afternoon World Cup match. But around 5 a.m., he was awoken by the captain’s announcement that the plane was ordered to return to Toronto after six hours, he said.

“We had no idea what was going on,” Cullen recalled in an interview Thursday, sitting in the plane on a runway at Pearson Airport. “We thought it could have been a problem in the Sao Paolo airport. We were hearing all kinds of rumours.”

Air Canada spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick said the flight took off normally around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, but returned to Pearson after airport authorities realized one of its passengers hadn’t passed through screening before boarding. On Wednesday night, all departing international flights were grounded as police searched for the man who circumvented airport security, before figuring out he was on the Sao Paolo flight.

Two hours after the plane turned around, passengers were notified, Cullen said.

On the flight, passengers watched GPS trackers showing the plane moving over the Atlantic Ocean on its way back to Toronto — a roundabout route that had some passengers speculating the flight was deemed a threat and was not allowed to pass over U.S. airspace, Cullen said.

“That started getting people concerned,” he said. “It was just the weirdest experience.”

By 6:30 a.m. the plane was back on the runway at Pearson, this time swarmed by police cruisers. Still completely unaware of what was happening, passengers grew increasingly concerned as police boarded the plane and called passengers into the terminal one by one for thorough security checks, Cullen said.

“Police rummaging through my carry-on bag was quite unnerving,” he said, adding that police singled out one man who he believed to be responsible for the security breach — a middle-aged, tall man with blond hair.

“He was speaking to police and I got the sense he didn’t speak English,” Cullen said.

Air Canada said Thursday morning that all ticket holders who still wished to travel were preparing to depart for Sao Paulo around 10:30 a.m. — almost 12 hours after they first boarded the plane.

According to an exchange on Twitter, veteran CBC host Peter Mansbridge and rival Sun News Network personality Ezra Levant were apparently stuck on the same plane on Wednesday night while police tried to determine who had bypassed the security checks.

“What happens on the plane, stays on the plane, okay?” Levant tweeted to Mansbridge. “It’s the beginning of an unlikely buddy comedy.”